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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25506397">Various snippets I never finished</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuiah/pseuds/asuiah'>asuiah</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Magi: Adventure of Sinbad (Anime), Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Multi, Parseltongue, Sane Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, Uchiha Sasuke Sees Ghosts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:07:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,529</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25506397</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuiah/pseuds/asuiah</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>These were mainly practice because I was working on my writing style, but I couldn't bring myself to finish them. All of them are barely a chapter long, as I was just testing out how I'd write ideas out more than anything. I'm proud of the ideas and the writing even if they're unfinished. I guess I just wanted to share them... Thanks for reading.</p><p>First chapter: The Misadventures of Harry and Dumbledeath. (1702 words) ie: After his Death, Harry wakes in a train station, where there is Dumbledore, who seems so very wrong.</p><p>Second chapter: Monochrome. (483 words) ie: Sasuke sees ghosts, and this is normal to him, until he reunites with a family member--or a few.</p><p>Third chapter: The Locket. (715 words) ie: Tom has been turned into a snake and forced inside Slytherin’s locket for trying to steal it back from the Keeper who saved his mother in return for her greatest possession. Harry, of course, is the innocent one in all of this.</p><p>Fourth chapter: The Path. (621 words) ie: An idea where a girl from Magi is forced to be reincarnated to change the world before it falls into chaos, danger, and deep terror. All with the help of her not-crush, Sinbad.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Albus Dumbledore &amp; Harry Potter, Death &amp; Harry Potter, Harry Potter &amp; Tom Riddle, Sinbad &amp; OC, Uchiha Mikoto &amp; Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Sasuke &amp; Uchiha Shisui</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Misadventures of Harry and Dumbledeath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>(The misadventures of Harry and Dumbledeath: ie: After his Death, Harry awakens in a train station, where there is Dumbledore, who seems so very wrong.)</span>
</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>1)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something is not as it should be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the quietness that first startles him. There’s always been a stillness, a sense of void––of blankness, only ever broken by the struggle of quiet terror, of choked and raw bitten rasps, the echo of an inward grapple of shame and feeble pride. The exception––...finally voiceless? Silence laughs it’s triumph mockingly through the eternal white. He strides in the direction of nothingness, breathing white vapour, perceiving the lungs of none but himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cradled by the formless milk floor, there’s a dead baby under the shadow of a bench, lying in wait.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Horrific, it looks, with skin so translucent it’s like looking through glass; it’s face gaunt, skin stretched tightly over too-big bones. It looked as if it’d tear with even the gentlest touch, like it’d wither and shrivel like that of a decrepit pale rose. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dumbledore kneels down and examines it thoughtfully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cold. It’s skin is as cold as the grave, with the texture of cured leather. Gone are the shivers of icy horror, the trembling of weak, mangled limbs. It’s half-hearted soul quivers in the air around it; six dry stars, cooler than the embrace of a glacier, lost and divided in the mist of a cloudy white galaxy. Very still, it is—frozen in the illusion of time, chest eerily silent in death.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a dead baby under the bench. Only, it isn’t a baby, not at all, and it’s not supposed to be dead, not in a place such as this. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How very strange,” he says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>2)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is somewhere and nowhere, all at once. A white death, lost in a formless cloud; he feels unwaveringly calm without a reason or even a thought towards it. For a moment, he has no name, no semblance of being, no care of why. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the edge of his vision—there’s movement. Noise. A spot against the endless gleam of white. An old man sits on a bench, hands clasped together on his lap.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ice-cold reality slams down upon him. It comes, like a startling revelation, that he has a name, a gender, that he is more. It's not pleasant. It feels like waking up in a nightmare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Professor,” Harry says, fumbling in his haste to stand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Soft blue eyes trail to his face, glinting warmly under half-moon spectacles. “Hello again, Harry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hello again, he says, it means to continue. Harry can’t help himself but feel a little sick, a little exhausted in his horror. Dead. Dead but yet </span>
  <em>
    <span>still </span>
  </em>
  <span>alive.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>3)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The body. It looks, feels—familiar. Heavy and suffocating. Like trying to breathe through water, like expecting light in an abyss; like drinking air from an empty glass. He is the striking feeling of loss.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks numbly, picturing red-slitted eyes, a thin snarling mouth, piercing green light,</span>
  <em>
    <span> it’s you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s dead.” A comforting hand is laid on his shoulder, but it feels strange, not right at all; it feels like holding ice cubes in your hand and trying to feel the melted wetness through the numbness. A shudder hangs on his spine. Familiarity sits muted on the tip of his tongue. Then the hand is gone and the wrongness settles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s a good thing though, right?” he says. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Perhaps. It may have gone on. It might have even gone back. My answer to this is…” Dumbledore smiles brightly, “I haven’t a clue!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>4)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“On?” he parrots, eyes sharp. Dumbledore only smiles, and it isn’t really a smile – not at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“To continue…” his voice is contemplative, a carefree wonder. “One could find it to be as hard as staying, I would think.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>5)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lemon drop?” he offers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No—thanks, I’m good.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>6)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wonders, a lot, about the dead body under the bench. How it could’ve been dead in the first place in such a lonely, eternal realm, and why.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps, it could’ve been his mother’s protection. Maybe it was karma. Whatever it is – Harry doesn’t know if he even wants the answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(If Harry would’ve asked Dumbledore, in the lonely of the blinding station… well, he would’ve gotten a very peculiar answer indeed. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>How would he have reacted, one could wonder, if he knew that reality unearthed the moment Harry Potter took his last living breath?)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>7)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You… aren’t Dumbledore,” he realises. “You never have been, have you? All this time?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Quite right, you are.” Death says and offers his hand. “Lemon drop?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He choked on a laugh. “Blimey,” he mutters, feeling much like how Ron looked after puking slugs and imagines his face to be a similar green. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh dear,” said Death, with a sort of cheeky, unbothered apathy that would take years to cultivate. “Mind the carpet, would you?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>8)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what Dumbledore would’ve said to you,” said Death, glancing at him stonily. “And I don’t care. Mortals conversing on things such as man-made warring is beneath me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry blinked. “So you don’t have wars with other beings?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. Everything is as it should be.” Here, Death glances at him again, but this time there is a shadow to his face. “Other than you, of course.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course,” Harry repeats wryly. His stomach twists uncomfortably, because nothing about Harry has ever really been normal, has it? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>9)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, Master.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Harry.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Master.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Harry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Master!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>10)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A manor towers over them, ghastly and terrific, the kind of one you’d see in a muggle horror film with black iron fences, and gnarled, dead trees and all. The dark wooden slats looked tinged-green and rotten, the granite columns crumbled and ancient-looking, the grass a dead burnt umber. Stone gargoyles peered down at them from their places on the dentil, unforgivingly menacing. The front door stood in their path, taller than even Hagrid, painted black with only a wolf-themed iron knocker––it was all very intimidating.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is my house,” Death announces.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s…”  Would it be rude to suggest a fixer-upper? “...very large.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he looks to Death expecting him to lead the way, the being only gives him a bland stare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What now?” he asks pointedly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why, you go up and knock, of course!” Death said, as if it wasn’t his house.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a subtle command in his tone. One does not merely defy Death whilst standing so close. Harry shivers, but plays along, feeling a bit like a doe being led into a trap. “Oh yes, how could I have forgotten? It’s all very…” he gestures vaguely at their sullen surroundings, his voice flat. Stalling. “—bright and welcoming.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There is no sound, he realises. No birds, or insects; just their voices ringing clearly through the eerie atmosphere. Even the wind–uncontrollable, always there, felt with each movement–was gone, and it made all motions feel too warm, too light, like he’d lost a sense. Everything was utterly still.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Glad you see it my way,” Death replies, understanding the sarcasm but strangely looking pleased nonetheless. Perhaps nobody had ever gone along with his demands? Harry rather doubted that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gives a grand gesture, eyes lit like burning coal, which Harry concluded, was a rather strange look on Dumbledore’s wizened face. “Well, then. Lead the way, Master.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right.” he says with a grimace, and strides through the granite arch, steps echoing hollowly. He stops in front of the door, shoulders stiff, and reaches towards the wolf knocker before he could convince himself otherwise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Grrrrr—!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A burst of pain strikes his knuckles. Something sharp tears into the raw flesh, blood oozing down the back of his hand. With a fairly girly shriek, Harry rips his wrist back to hold to his chest, gazing wide-eyed at the knocker, where wolfish blood-covered fangs are retreating back into it’s iron prison with a rumbling growl. Behind him, Death is laughing that strange, cackling laugh of his, and the door abruptly swings open, a cloud of dust eating at his vision.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Turning, he coughs stale air and rubs at his red-rimmed eyes, blinking rapidly. “Planned that, did you?” he groans, disgruntled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It does that every time,” Death amends, his humored smile thinning but not leaving completely. “You are the only one other than I able to survive the death magic within the bite, however.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t say,” he mutters, flicking his wand and watching the wounds close. “How many have died from that?” he asks wearily.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The being’s smile gains an edge at that, dangerous and quietly satisfied, “More than I care to count.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ha.” Harry says. “Right.” He eyes the dark stone floor, cracked with age but cleaner than anything else he’d seen so far. Bloodless. He glances at his hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now,” Death begins, his voice frightfully cheerful. “I would think it’s time for a tour.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gestures towards the door, and Harry startles at the movement on the edge of his vision, his gut lurching at the strange sight that anticipates him. It is no entry hall, but a writhing, oily black mass of shadows, churning endlessly in the cage of the doorframe. Harry’s throat tightens, his heart stuttering in his chest; fear of the unknown gripping his veins.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Death only steps forward, his smile infinite, his gnarled hands beckoning. He feels his body move on it’s own, drawn forth by a strange magnetism. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come along, Master…” he says, a black abyss building in his eyes, glinting ominously. “Your destiny awaits.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He coaxes him in, dragging him blind, laughing him deaf, dragging him into black numbness. The wolf-knocker howls. Light diminishes. Harry stops breathing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The shadows cackle, and the door slams shut behind them.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>11)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Someone was watching him; a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>12)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t have wards?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Death only gives him a strange look. “I’m Death,” he says, as if it is enough of an answer. Harry supposes it is.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>13)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is my chair,” Death said, gesturing to the growling, quivering form of a leather armchair. “It was bitten by the werewolf king during the annual Death Day party—a bit of a wild night. Don’t worry about it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>14)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good and evil?” Death laughs. “They are both mortal concepts, Harry Potter. I have no care for such things.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Monochrome</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>(Monochrome: ie: Sasuke sees ghosts, and this is normal to him, until he reunites with a family member--or a few.)</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>1)</p>
<p>He felt his breath catch in his throat because in the crowd, behind a heavily bandaged old man that Sasuke distantly recognized, there stood his dead cousin.</p>
<p>“My eye,” Shisui pleads, his voice mangled, horrific and shredded, like he was choking on every breath, like he was drowning on air. His face sat pale and frozen, his jaw waterlogged and decaying, his teeth showing through his cheek grotesquely. A single sharingan spun wildly in his socket, more vivid when faced with the gaping abyss of it’s pair. Sasuke felt his whole body lock up in terror. </p>
<p>Shisui’s mouth opened and closed slowly, half-formed words escaping in unintelligible, shivering groans that made the air feel cold. He reached up with a gnarled, raw hand, clawing at his empty eye. Sasuke watched with nausea as Shisui brutally scratched at his eyelid and the tender looking flesh that lurked beneath. “S-Stolen,” he grated, blood oozing from his fingernails.</p>
<p>Sasuke’s breath began to leave him in stuttering heaves. He felt his vision blur, because Itachi... Itachi had stolen Shisui’s eyes, he remembered. What had he said? To get strong— your best friend, you must kill them? Is that what Shisui is trying to tell him? That Itachi had killed him, just as he’d insinuated to Sasuke that night?</p>
<p>There’s a puddle under him, Sasuke notices distantly. His remaining clothes cling to his loose, sickly form, and they keep dripping as if the water is seeping out from beneath Shisui’s skin.</p>
<p>He remembers hearing about how they’d found Shisui’s body. Eyeless, with broken bones and large fleshy wounds and wet to the bone with water choking his lungs. He remembers being upset, horrified, wondering who would do such a thing to Shisui, kind and strong and goofy as he was, and he remembers crying and thinking it was so <em> unfair </em>— </p>
<p>“Sasuke?” someone said, far away. “What are you—”</p>
<p>Shisui let out a deep, shuddering groan that had some decomposing skin detach from his body and hit the puddle beneath him with a wet sounding slap.</p>
<p>Sasuke turned and vomited.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>2)</p>
<p>A hand touches his back, tender and supportive as it draws him into an embrace. It was familiar, softer than the gentlest breath caught in the wind. <em> Mother </em> , he thought instinctively, because only his mother would warm the chill that rests so deep in the bones with just a touch, as she’d always been able to do <em> before </em>. Only a mother could inspire such safety in the gentle curl of their fingers as they rub at Sasuke’s scalp and tired shoulders. Only a mother could coax heartbreak forwards with a low, reassuring hum. Yet only a corpse could have such a foul, bitter smell, like acid on the tongue, like bugs clinging to rot.</p>
<p>Sasuke jerks awake.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Locket</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>(The Locket: ie: Tom has been turned into a snake and forced inside Slytherin’s locket for trying to steal it back from the Keeper who saved his mother in return for her greatest possession. Harry, of course, is the innocent one in all of this.)</span>
</h3><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>0)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s a Keeper? It’s simply just a keeper of things,” he says. “That’s all they are, really. They take and give and if you try to take it back forcefully, you’re cursed.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>1)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Legend of Slytherin’s cursed necklace was infamous. And it remained a legend, with no proof of it existing - only whispers passed along in the shadows, of strange stories of a cursed object driving men and women alike to suicide. It was just a bedtime story… until young Harry Potter obtained it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tom Marvolo Riddle is cursed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was nobody’s fault but his, of course. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>3)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The locket is a dirty old thing. Harry isn’t quite too sure why he had snatched it in the first place. His mind had felt rather foggy, he could recall, and had blamed it on the hunger - as persistent and looming as it always is. He didn’t think too much of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Evidently, that was a mistake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>4)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A snake?” Harry mutters. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a hiss of breath, and it is long and stuttering. The snake’s next sounds are quiet, slow, and wonderingly, impossibly, Harry understands them, hears it as clear as anything. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because--- it is not a snake’s voice Harry hears, but instead there is a man’s voice, raspy and low, barely there at all, and he is speaking words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A boy,” it says, a hiss clinging against its tongue not unlike a lisp. It blinks gem red eyes at him - a slow thing, like it is waking from a long nap, slow enough for him to see the light edge of its second eyelids glide smoothly on the edge of its eyes - and then it rises. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seeing a snake rise is a strange thing, Harry thinks. It does so without the aid of extra limbs, rising as if it is on strings, curling its body in a peculiar dance that makes it seem so very- inhuman. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is a snake-- but, it is not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not by it’s voice, that - while caged in a hiss of sound - is a man’s voice, low and breathy and almost desperate. Certainly not by the blood red eyes that Harry has not seen in neither creature nor man, and he knows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows; this is no snake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>you?” he asks, unmoving, frozen in dread. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You ssspeak,” it says, and wonder is eating it’s words. The eyes are fixed on him, unblinking, and they hold a kind of cold, clinical human intelligence, or perhaps, even beyond human.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It looks-- delighted, almost. Exhilarated. If a snake could look so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yesss,” it hisses, and continues, mesmerized, “You are useful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry feels not unlike a fly caught in a spider’s web, feeble and struck dumb. Rattled, which he feels is warranted, because this snake-not-a-snake looks at him and--</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Wants</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It wants something from him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Boy!” It is Vernon, faintly, from the floor below, his demanding voice ringing thickly even through the sealed tiles that Harry stands upon. He is gruff, more in sight than sound, but one would never guess with how it attacks the ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is unpleasant. Terribly so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry is used to it -- the snake is not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Annoyed, it sounds, when it jerks it’s head and lets out a resounding hiss.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Who--</span>
  </em>
  <span>” It says, and does not finish, because quite suddenly it is gone, like it was never even there in the first place -- the room sitting untouched by any sign of life other than Harry. Quiet, other than the sounds of his uncle, which seem to be getting progressively louder in his agitation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry blinks, but the scene before him remains the same. Quiet, unlike the sound of his pounding heart. The air is eerily still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The locket in the sink shivers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Boy!” Vernon shouts, mindlessly infuriated, and he’s like the sound of a persistent bell -- one Harry could only wish to be rid of. He jumps to his feet at the sound of his uncle thundering up the staircase, his ominous footsteps shuddering the weak floor of the hall. </span>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Path</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>(The Path: ie: An idea where a girl from Magi is forced to be reincarnated to change the world before it falls into chaos, danger, and deep terror. All with the help of her not-crush, Sinbad.)</span>
</h3><p> </p><p>
  <span>1)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She awakens to the sound of thousands of tiny wings flapping near her ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your soul is not ready,” a being says, and it isn’t really speaking at all, just willing her to understand through the only way she knows  - a vibration of energy that hums and grows into a mockery of a voice, but it is so, so much more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is somewhere and nowhere, all at once. For a moment it is within a sea of stars, and then at the bottom of an ocean of ink, before it all melts, merges, and she hovers under a waterfall of gems that glitter of moonshine, and they melt into water before reaching her. Then, like the flick of a switch it is all gone, and she is clutched by a cloak of darkness, a starless night. She is not alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not ready?” she asks, and it is with no mouth, no lungs that breathe the word from her lips. A thought-stream, she feels more than she knows, is connecting her, connecting them. Overwhelming, it is, and despite the disappearance of her body she feels tense, coiled like a snake, a balloon waiting to burst. Then, all at once, it vanishes, and she feels something take over her; a calmness, a stillness, and then she feels words form almost against her will, ones she as a human could not understand, but ones her soul knows all too well, a grief growing within her very being, and those words tremble, “I-It’s so hard down there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The warmth reaches out, all-encompassing, a comfort resonating within, one that reminds her of the warmth of a fireplace and hot chocolate and people you love, and with it came feelings that match her sorrow, clutches her grief and breathes compassion. “I know,” it says, and she feels the love, the familiarity, the reassurance behind those words, “Just one more time, and it will all be over.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to go back,” her soul cries, and her human consciousness aches, tries to understand, “It’s so cruel, it’s so cruel down there! They don’t even understand… T-they don’t… I... ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then I will give you a head-start,” it whispers, and she felt it’s warmth receding, slipping away like water in a human’s fingers, just a brush of wind against the starless night, “But the rest you must uncover for yourself. Your soul must grow to continue on. This is all I can do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t go,” she wails, and her soul stretches, reaches out feebly, “I don’t know if I can do this again!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have faith. In times of need, ask for guidance. We are always with you.” And that warmth surrounds her again in the brush of a moment, fills her heart until it feels like bursting, a deep love dancing within her soul, and it uses no expression of communication but she knows it as if it was spoken aloud. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You are so loved</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it meant, and then it is gone so suddenly, like a limb ripped from her very being. The starless night folds around her, dissolves into a breath of breeze, and then she is nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(She is someone and no-one, all at once, and then never again.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2) - Sinbad</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Under his piercing gaze she feels like she is floating in that starless night once again, stripped from her host body and laid out in the bareness of her soul. A shiver travels along her spine pleasantly, a warm tingle igniting in her belly. She glances away.</span>
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